CHAPTER 5. AGEING AND LEARNING
“T
here’s no doubt that repeatedly
doing certain tasks improves
performance on those tasks,”
says Professor Jason Mattingley, a cognitive
neuroscientist at UQ’s QBI and School of
Psychology. “It’s been much more
difficult to prove any broader
benefits for brain function, or
help with untrained tasks.”
Prof Mattingley and his
team have now shown that
brain training for specific
tasks can also improve
broader brain performance,
when combined with
brain stimulation. They
recently studied the benefits
of brain stimulation devices
that deliver transcranial direct
current stimulation (tDCS) via electrodes
on the scalp (see image above). In the
study, participants were trained in a
simple decision-making task while they
received either active or sham (placebo)
brain stimulation. The team then used
BRAIN TRAINING
THERE ARE NOW COUNTLESS ONLINE APPS AND SOFTWARE PROGRAMS
THAT ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO EXERCISE THEIR BRAIN TO BOOST COGNITIVE
FUNCTION. DOES ‘BRAIN TRAINING’ REALLY WORK?
Prof Mattingley’s research also investigates
selective attention, the process by which
we filter out information to focus on certain
objects – a topic that fascinates him. “Most of
us regulate our attention effortlessly, and for
the most part we’re not even aware of what
we’re doing,” he says. “But attention is a multi-
faceted and complex brain function that is
only beginning to be understood. It’s important
we do so, because many developmental and
acquired brain disorders cause impairments of
attention, and these can be very debilitating
for sufferers.”
mathematical modelling to quantify any
improved performance. Participants
were later re-tested, on both the trained
task as well as a visual search task for
which they’d received no training.
The researchers found that
after four sessions of training,
combined with tDCS designed
to increase activity in the
brain's left prefrontal
cortex, participants’
performance in both
the decision-making
task and the untrained
visual task improved.
“This study is the
first to show transfer of
performance benefits to
untrained cognitive operations with
these types of tasks,” Prof Mattingley says.
“What’s more, these generalised benefits
were still evident a fortnight later.”
He believes the study’s outcomes
support an important new research
direction into the neural basis of cognitive
training. “Our findings could help in efforts
to stop cognitive decline associated with
healthy ageing, or improve cognition in
people with brain disease or injury,” Prof
Mattingley says. He cautions, however,
about the use of DIY brain stimulation.
“There are still many unknowns with these
technologies. Although brain stimulation
devices are now available commercially, we
would not recommend people embark on
do-it-yourself brain stimulation at home.”
DID YOU
KNOW?
Professor
Jason Mattingley
COGNITIVE
NEUROSCIENTIST AT UQ’S
QBI AND SCHOOL OF
PSYCHOLOGY.
PHOTOGRAPHPATRICKHAMILTON